FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Who is BEA?

BEA Systems, Inc. is the market leader for E-Commerce, Application Servers, and Transaction Processing. BEA provides a comprehensive infrastructure for development and deployment of reliable, scalable business applications for e- commerce.

Core products include solutions for application integration, business process automation, portal and personalization, Java application server, and client/server frameworks. BEA provides the products, solutions, and services necessary to ensure your applications and systems are scalable, reliable, secure, manageable, and have the performance to meet the needs of your clients now, and in the future.

Industry Solution Overview

New York State agencies have an incredible number of information technology challenges: legacy, packaged, and distributed applications that don’t talk to each other, business rule requirements that keep changing (client requests, legislation), the need to communicate with outside sources, providing web-access to clients, and developing and deploying new applications and systems based on the best technology available. BEA is the leader in these areas, helping agencies and organizations solve these issues and more.

The solutions span the complete, end-to-end eGovernment transaction platform, providing agencies with the cost effective solutions they need.

Why consider BEA Systems?

BEA is a market leader who adheres to industry standards, and runs on almost all platforms (hardware, operating system, and database).

• BEA is a $600 million company (growing at 80% per year) with over 2,500 employees, and 52 offices in 24 countries • BEA provides the processing framework for the largest organizations in the world. These customers use BEA solutions because they can’t afford to fail: Amazon.com, Peoplesoft, FedEx, Delta Airlines, Fidelity Investments, Nokia, Bell Atlantic, VISA, SWIFT, E*Trade, United Airlines, National Car Rental, Andersen Consulting, and over 6,500 more. • Government customer include: - NYS Office of Court Administration - NYS Office of Children and Family Services - UK Employment Service – 30,000 users, 1,100 offices, 7 million transactions per day - China Post – 1.2 billion residents, 82,000 post offices, 4 million square miles - French Finance Control – 50,000 users, social welfare benefits - U.S. Bureau of Labor & Statistics, U.S. Army, USDA - State of Arkansas – the nations first compliant Workforce Automation project • Transaction processing is all they do They don’t sell hardware or databases, so they don’t have another agenda. They work with all platforms, and propose the solutions that best suit y needs.

Enterprise Application Integration

What is it? Integrating applications from different programming standards (Java, EJB, Cobol, C, C++, VB, PowerBuilder, etc), different RDBMS’ (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, SQL Server, DB2, UDB, etc), different ERP systems (PeopleSoft, Oracle, SAP, etc), different messaging services (MQSeries, XML, TCP/IP, etc), and different platforms (Unix, NT, mainframe, PC, Linux, AS/400, etc).

Where is it needed? Any place you have two or more applications (packaged applications and/or internal, proprietary applications) that need to talk to each other.

Who can use it? An example would be an agency that has mainframe applications (a financial system, for instance) that needs to talk to their human resource system (PeopleSoft, for instance), which needs to talk to a new end-user time and attendance system (in-house Java system, for instance). All of these systems need to share transactions and information. The time & attendance system needs to tell the human resource system how many hours are worked, vacation pay, etc. The human resource system needs to tell the financials system how much the agency is spending on payroll, vacation, comp time, etc. And if the employee has a split item between different agencies, this information needs to be shared with the other agency, as well as the OSC PeopleSoft payroll system.

What is BEA’s Enterprise Application Integration product? BEA eLink.

What is it? • Allows organizations to use pre-built adapters, or their Adapter Development Kit for your proprietary applications, to seamlessly integrate applications on multiple platforms, from multiple sources, using multiple databases, on multiple operating systems. • The organization doesn’t have to spend $$$$ re-developing or modifying the application interface when new versions of applications are released. eLink handles that transparently. • High performance, scalability, and reliability. • “It is the only product on the market to be able to model business transactions in the true sense of the word and provide an integration platform to implement the model.” Ovum Associates • Backed by BEA’s award-winning 7/24 support.

Business Process Automation

What is it? Managing end-to-end business processes with process integration and workflow technology. Increase system efficiency, decrease product development time, and gain valuable performance data for process monitoring and improvement.

Where is it needed? Any place you need to define, execute, and monitor a process. • E-Government integration; drives actions/tasks on both sides of the firewall with a common process engine, and interoperates with BEA eLink solutions for end-to-end application integration. Allows agencies, companies, municipalities, etc. to manage the flow of work from one application to another. • Assemble previously built Java EJB components into applications; by defining the process flow between user written or third-party components Process Integrator will control the business process between the EJBs (application modules). • Traditional enterprise workflow; routes work within an enterprise, and outside an enterprise, to individuals in a role (group). Managers can monitor task information by individual person or groups for completion. • Web-application integration; integrating a web-site with backend applications.

Who can use it? As an example, NYS Office of the State Comptroller and the Central Accounting System (CAS). CAS needs to have better process automation between OSC and the corresponding agencies. This would allow requests and approvals to flow in an approved and organized way, with manual intervention only when necessary. It is also important that any tool provide a reporting/monitoring system to monitor the workflow progress, and analyze areas for performance improvement.

What is BEA’s Business Process Automation product? WebLogic Process Integrator.

What is it? • Allows users to define, automate, and improve business processes that span applications, platforms, technologies, and even multiple entities (agencies, companies, municipalities, etc). • The development tool is a simple flow chart. No programming is required. Tasks that are created can invoke new Java components (EJB), Java applications, as well as existing application and services in your current backend applications (e.g. services, CICS transactions, PeopleSoft, etc.) • Allows users/administrators to customize the business process flow to deal with scenarios such as an employee being on vacation or out of the office, or approvals done on a group basis. • The only Java-based process integrator on the market, providing the best efficiency (high performance), reliability, and scalability. • Backed by BEA’s award-winning 7/24 support.

Java Application Server

What is it? A platform for developing and hosting (running) today’s new applications based on Java and EJBs (application modules).

Where is it needed? Where an organization is developing and deploying new applications using the industry standard for web-based applications; Java.

Who can use it? All agencies that are interested in developing new applications. As an example, NYS Office of Court Administration is using WebLogic Server to re-engineer the entire Universal Case Management System from the mainframe to web-based applications. They have already developed an Electronic Filing application for court documents: (http://fbem.courts.state.ny.us:7501/ef/mainframe.htm).

What is BEA’s Java Application Server product? WebLogic Application Server.

What is it? • It is the only application server that scales to allow enterprise deployment of EJB applications. • It allows you to use any end-user device to access applications (terminal, PC, web browser, cell phone, kiosk, PDA, laptop, etc). This allows you to re- use business rules, but provide for a variety of client user interfaces. After all, the business rules remain the same, but the user interface may vary widely. Why not re-use your business rules, rather than re-write or duplicate what you already have in place? This is the value of component based development and deployment. • WebLogic Application Server functionality.. • It’s clustering function allows for efficient, reliable, and scalable failover in the case of hardware/ problems, or even when you need to upgrade the servers for new OS or database versions. • 1/3 of their WebLogic Server sales are from customers that have come to them after they tried to use a different application server, and failed. Organizations choose BEA when they can’t afford to fail! • Backed by BEA’s award-winning 7/24 support.

Portal and Personalization

What is it? A platform for hosting applications where the end user (and the system administrator) can customize the application/system content for the end- users needs.

Where is it needed? Where an organization wants their users to be efficient and have a sense of participation.

Who can use it? All agencies. A good example of portal and personalization is MyYahoo!. Users can customize the web page to show them only things that they’re interested in (and have access to). Agencies can use the same concept to give agency users or clients a view of the applications and services that are relevant to their job functions or needs.

What is BEA’s Java Application Server product? WebLogic Personalization Server.

What is it ? • It’s based on WebLogic Server, and enjoys all of it’s technical functions and benefits. • It’s highly customizable for users and administrators. • Backed by BEA’s award-winning 7/24 support.

Client/Server Applications

What is it? A computing architecture that divides the application into three basic components: a client, a server, and a network to connect the two.

Where is it needed? Where an organization wants to use traditional programming languages (C, C++, Cobol, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, etc) and a database (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, DB2, UDB, etc) to develop and deploy scalable applications.

Who can use it? Any agency that wants to utilize their current programming talent.

What is BEA’s Client/Server product? TUXEDO.

What is it? • TUXEDO is the framework that helps you build, run, and administer a client/server application. This framework handles firewalls of protection, high availability (failover and rollback), load balancing, network integration, and scalability. • According to the Standish Group, using TUXEDO can save over 30% in total system costs, and 40-50% savings in development time! • TUXEDO is used in over 70% of non-mainframe client/server environments. Users include Amazon.com, FedEx (36 million transactions per day), and the UK Employment Service (7 million transactions per day, 30,000+ users, 1,100 offices). http://www.bea.com/customers/tuxedo/UK_employment.html • Backed by BEA’s award-winning 7/24 support. Does BEA offer services?

Yes, they offer consulting, design, planning, implementation, assessment, and training services (all available from their NYS OGS contract).

What training courses does BEA offer?

They provide a wide range of training for their own products, as well as industry generic courses focusing on the latest development and deployment technologies (Java, data modeling, object technology, web technology). Students can attend classes at their public education centers, or they can bring the training to your location (or a local conference center).

Do they supply evaluation copies of their software?

Yes. You can obtain full working copies of their solutions to test the features and functionality. BEA also offers proof-of-concept projects.

How do I learn more?

Contact Cliff Goggins at 518 383-1901, or [email protected]. Additional information can be found at the following web sites: • BEA web page: www.bea.com • Recent BEA News Release: www.bea.com/press/releases/2000/index.html • BEA Professional Services: • BEA Documentation: //e-docs.beasys.com